At this week-end’s boating festival at Pendeford, fans from across the country are sailing in. Mark Andrews talks to one of the organisers

See also:Sun shines on canal festival

It’s not everybody’s idea of a holiday. While most people head for sunnier climes – or at least a spot on the coast – for their summer break, Sandy Jones has left her Wiltshire home behind to spend the summer on a boat at a rain-lashed canal junction in Wolverhampton.

So far this year, the 52-year-old grandmother has travelled 400 miles along Britain’s canal network, with recent visits including Macclesfield, Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool.

“It’s a slower pace of life and you see lots of different parts of the country. You have a different back garden each night,” she says.

“You get to know friendly people, and everyone helps everyone else. It’s like life as it used to be.

“You don’t get any traffic jams – well not many – and when you go under the motorways you see all the cars going past so fast, and you’re going underneath so slowly.”

Not that her time in Wolverhampton has been particularly relaxing. Sandy is one of the leading volunteers with the Inland Waterways Authority, and has spent the last four weeks preparing for the organisation’s national festival at Autherley Junction in Pendeford.

Around 330 boats, from all over the country, are set to descend on Pendeford for the festival, which runs from Saturday to Monday.

“We’re hoping for 20,000 people to turn out,” says Sandy, who sits on the national organising committee. “That includes visitors, and there will be 250 campers who will be coming down.”

Needless to say, an event on this scale takes a lot of organisation, and planning for this year’s festival began a year ago.

“The core of the committee is made up of 18 members, but over the last four weeks there have probably been about 100 of us on site. We’re all volunteers”

Over the last few weeks the helpers have regularly been working until eight at night. A large number of the male volunteers work in a construction shop on site, where a gang of “chippies” can build almost anything that is needed.

“It’s like being in a workplace where you meet like-minded people,” says Sandy. “We have had to get a crane on the site to lift some of the boats. We have also got a huge exhibition hall marquee which is done up with lots of stalls, and there is also a marquee where we will be having cookery demonstrations.

“It costs £250,000 to stage the festival, and we have a commercial director who has to deal with all the exhibitors and their stalls, and because this time we’re in the middle of a residential area, you have to consult with local people.”

Sandy caught the boating bug around 20 years ago when she and her family went on a boating holiday along the Monmouth and Brecon Canal in Wales.

“We were kind of hooked from our first week,” she says.

“I think that is the same for a lot of people, when you have done it you find there is nothing else like it.

“We had a young family then, and it’s the kind of holiday you can take children on. There’s things to do and things to see, and the children do without the television. When we came back from our first holiday we thought ‘we will do that again’, and it went from there.

“I started coming to the festivals as a volunteer about 10 years ago, doing something menial, like making the sandwiches, and somehow I ended up doing more and more. As you near retirement you can give it a bit more help.”

While the show will include many working vessels dating as far back as the 1920s, Sandy’s own boat is relatively new at just 12 years old, and has all manner of modern conveniences.

“It doesn’t have one of those noisy chugging engines, it is pretty quiet, and we have a washing machine and a coal fire,” she says. “We have most of our home comforts really, just a little less space.”

Sandy says buying and maintaining a boat is in itself something of a commitment.

“You need to use your boat to make it worthwhile as they are expensive to buy. You have got to maintain your engine, and the bottom of the boat has to be blacked up every two to three years as well.”

Sandy says she hopes the festival will raise the profile of Autherley Junction nationally.

The site, where the Shropshire Union Canal ends and meets with the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal near to Oxley, dates back to 1835, and is one of the few remaining fully authentic example of a working junction, and all its original buildings and features have been preserved.

“It’s a canal system that isn’t used fully, a lot of the boats which go through the locks then go out of the area,” she says.

“Unless you stop and look, you don’t actually know what it is like.

“There are some beautiful canals around the West Midlands.”

l The Inland Waterways Association National Festival 08 will be at Pendeford Park, Blaydon Road, Wolverhampton from 10am to 6pm today and tomorrow, and then between 10am and 5pm on Bank Holiday Monday. There will also be an illuminated boat parade at 9pm on Sunday.